You want to generate fun in your space, to challenge other countries’ supporters in Coworking spaces around Europe, have a look on Coworking Cup (or on the FB group).

Here is the comment provided by the organisers :

The european football championship is just around the corner! And as always football fans can´t wait to place their bets in online football pools. This year’s Coworking Cup will start on Thursday May 17th, till July 31st, 2012 and guarantees 31 games of betting fun.

Coworkers and startups from across Europe can compete in teams against each other in a global group ranking and the best teams will receive awesome prizes.
The spaces and coworker can offer prizes or promote and organize events, like public viewing, during the championship.
The Coworking Cup 2012 – in short, CoWoCup – was developed by Railslove, an internet agency from Cologne, in collaboration with Coworking Cologne, the umbrella organization of coworking spaces in Cologne.

Global Enterprise, Club Office and BetaHaus, with the support of Deskmag, have teamed up to shape Coworking Europe 2011, the second pan-European conference on coworking.

The Coworking Europe 2010 in Brussels was a huge success.

Coworking Europe 2011 will take place in Berlin on November 3-4-5th.

This year, the Coworking Europe conference will bring together thinkers, activists, policy makers, corporation HR and innovation managers, entrepreneurs, freelances, coworking spaces managers and owners, plus all those interested in uncovering the real potential of coworking in Europe. Blending together local, European and global players, Coworking Europe will feature exciting presentations and inspiring debates. Have a look at the first draft of the program.

We invite you to take part in this exciting event.

We offer a special price for the whole coworking community.

Book before August 31st 2011 and pay only 85 EUR (all taxes incl.) for the three days conferences.
=> ONLY 150 Early Birds TICKETS AVAILABLE for the early booking

About affordable hotel prices in Berlin

A limited number of business suites and hostel beds are available for visitors of Coworking Europe Conference 2011 at CLUBOFFICE Berlin at a special rate. We recommend you to contact CLUBOFFICE early as demand will be high. Quote Coworking Europe Conference 2011 when you make your booking to receive your discount.Don’t wait too long…

We had a great time at the European Coworking Conference, which ended on saturday. There is no way to cover all of the event in a single blog post, but below are some of the highlights from my perspective:

1. Coworking is growing rapidly in Europe: much like the U.S., coworking and the number of coworking facilities is growing quite rapidly. There is a pretty interesting pattern to the growth – the farther south you go, the more facilities you find.Spain and Italy have a lot of coworking facilities. The nordic countries have few. The countries in the middle – Germany, France, UK, etc – have strong coworking movements but not as strong as Spain and Italy.

Someone I met at the conference, an owner of a business center/coworking space, said to me in a private conversation: most of these guys are never going to make money. They talk about nice things like building communities and hanging out in kitchens, but that isn’t going to make money.

He’s right. He’s also completely missing the point.

Why he’s right: true, many of the coworking spaces are not going to make money. They sure aren’t going to get rich, they likely won’t even be very well-off. For some, only their full-time jobs keep their coworking initiatives running.

Why he’s missing the point: it’s not about money. True, money comes into the picture sooner or later (after all, bills have to be paid), but the common thread through most of my conversations with coworking space owners and managers was that they do coworking because they feel the need in the community and in themselves to do it. Because it’s the right thing to do, and someone’s got to do it, and that somebody is me.

Because it was the right thing to do, people flew to Brussels from Ukraine and the US, from Paris and from Prague, from Ireland and Italy. Because it was the right thing to do, all of them gave up their weekends – and many of them paid the trip with their own money.

Why I find this remarkable: “the right thing to do” as the motivation has been around for a while – without it, the open source software movement would not have started. The fact that the open source ethos is spreading into other types of business and other communities – now that is new.

Coworking spaces are mostly small, full, privately-run and unsubsidized, earning money from a combination of desk and meeting space rental. And the number of spaces in Europe has grown rapidly, from under 20 before 2008, 80 in 2009, to at least 150 today. Some predict the growth curve to maintain its steep ascent. That’s the picture that emerged through a survey of coworking spaces, released on the weekend at the Coworking Europe conference in Brussels. The survey was sent out to all known coworking spaces in Europe, and elicited 47 responses.

The results show that 52% of spaces are small, with between 8 and 19 desks, while 6% could be described as extra-large, with a capacity of above 100. The figures show that most spaces have as many or more members than desks, indicating that most are operating at or above capacity, and that the industry is not oversaturated. For most, income from desk rental has to be supplemented by leasing meeting and event rooms to outside groups. 47% said they got by on desk rental alone.

I was honored to be invited to speak at the first Coworking Europe conference in Brussels. The conference was amazing. I love talking about coworking and how great was it to be in a room with 120 other coworking enthusiasts. There were a number of folks from the US but I was the only space owner. I met people from all over including Brussels of course, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russia, The Netherlands, lots of people from Germany and as far away as Latvia and the Ukraine. There were folks opening up spaces, established space owners, researchers, government officials, as well as representatives from Cisco, Medusa, and Steelcase.

The event was at The Hub Brussels which I have to say is an impressive coworking space. They have 5 very gracious hosts that work hard to make everything go smoothly for all their guests. The setup they have is a little different then how we do it at Office Nomads. For one, there are no resident desks. This leaves the room pretty flexible and everything is on wheels to make it even more so. We showed up on a Thursday morning and the office was in full swing. The next day, the first day of the conference, they had transformed everything into a large event space. Saturday, after everything was wrapped up, we watched as the hosts put it all back in a period of less then 15 minutes.

Anni Roolf from Wuppertal is initiating the first European Jelly week in the third week of January 2011. It’s a great idea. So far, three spots have been put on the map. Sure, there will be many more !

What about you ? Will you take part in this kind of big Jelly/coworking European “flashmob” like ?

Here is what Anni tells about it :

Everybody is invited to start a jelly at his place in this week
and to invite coworkers from all over Europe. Let’s take action to push local coworking initiatives and the european coworking community!

Jelly is a casual working event. People are coming together (in a person’s home, a coffee shop, or an office) to work for the day. Bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get your work done) and a friendly disposition.